NYC Dyke March – inclusive, but not for lesbians

The Dyke March was inclusive (meaning that transwomen and genderqueers were also welcome). Unfortunately some lesbians attending the march were accosted and harassed by a group of transwomen and genderqueers, even though the lesbians respected the inclusive policy.

One particular group (of about five or six lesbians) that was accosted included Cathy Brennan, whose image is well known in the LGBT community. The lesbian group were initially approached by a group of well over ten transwomen and genderqueers. The harrassing group varied in number from about ten to twenty people. Thankfully there was no physical violence during the incident, but the lesbians were quite shaken. The accosting group further followed the group of lesbians to the restaurant and continued to intimidate them.

Three of the accosting group were identified as Ida Hammer (transwoman), January Hunt (transwoman) and Jamie (female genderqueer). ETA: Holly Renee aka chub-rub (female genderqueer) has also admitted to being in the group, as well as admitting that the trans/queer group approached the lesbian group.

Here is January Hunt (transwoman) admitting to the incident at the time:

So there is no point in the lesbians complaining to the organisers of Dyke March, because the ringleader actually was one of the organisers, a transwoman harassing lesbians.

What makes this situation even more disturbing, is that Hammer is also a prominent transactivist. Hammer recently conducted a workshop at the Philadelphia Trans Health Conference. It becomes even more disturbing when the focus of Hammer’s transactivism is as an organiser of The Trans Women’s Anti-Violence Project. From the introduction:

As the title suggests, everything on this blog concerns violence against trans women.

The Trans Women’s Anti-Violence Project is a trans feminist project addressing issues of systematic, institutional and interpersonal violence and oppression experienced by trans women (those who were coercively assigned male at birth and identify or are identified as women/female) across multiple identities (e.g., race, class, dis/ability, citizen-status, nationality, sexuality, age, HIV status, and form, status, or age of transition, etc.)

Ida Hammer is a writer and social justice communicator. She organizes the Trans Women’s Anti-Violence Project. She presents workshops and trainings on cis privilege and being a trans ally. She’s also involved in organizing against sexualized violence. She’s a proud dyke-identified trans woman and an organizer of the New York City Dyke March.

Obviously Hammer has no qualms about inflicting violence or intimidation against others, which certainly devalues the legitimacy and anti-violence platform when anti-violence activists threaten others.

Here is Jamie and a Tumbr friend talking further on the events of yesterday, with Jamie agreeing that Cathy Brennan should have been punched in the face:

This is the calibre of transactivists (and genderqueer activists) and the reason why they are not welcome to Radfem events such as Radfem2012. Plus their proven track record of violence and intimidation towards others. Transactivists are targeting other marginalised groups (lesbians and women) with their threats, violence and intimidation – the word for that is bullying.

The above is an example of being ‘inclusive’ of transwomen. They take over the organisation of female/feminist events, their prominent transactivists are the ringleaders in threats against lesbians and women – even at an event that is supposed to be for lesbians.

Along with the MRAs, SPLC may soon be categorising transactivists as a hate group .

Admission that the trans/queer group approached the lesbians: my dear friend approached me saying that she wanted to talk to Cathy

BREAKING NEWS – Just had the confirmation that the ‘shy little wallflower of a transwoman’ that chub-rub was compelled to speak up for, was none other than Ida Hammer, well known transactivist. That is Ida in the (currently) last picture with hand on chest talking to Brennan.

Credibility for chub-rub’s version of events just plummented below zero!

Brennan tried defusing the situation with humour, but was met with accusations

Admission of loss of temper: “So do I regret losing my temper? No.”

Cathy Brennan, backed up against the bushes, being surrounded by queer and transactivists

I swear to Amon if I see Cathy Brennan anywhere in NYC y’all are gonna see headlines. “Deranged Asian woman stabs another on the N Train”

Claire Cramer’s admission that she was in the group. This response is tacked onto another tumbler post regarding the first photo, where you can see her face. Typically, the post degenerates into ‘all the violence that happens to transwomen and how radfems are responsible for that’. Get a clue, most violence against transwomen is committed by MALES, and males that specifically are anti-radfem, the leap of logic required to accuse radfems being responsible for all the violence against transwomen is ludicrous.

I am the person in the picture. If what I said was taken as an apology for the way that my friends acted, that wasn’t the message I was trying to get across. What I was trying to say was that I wish that the arguments hadn’t centered on personal attacks that were not related to the question at hand, and that’s because I don’t think that’s effective. There was screaming and violent body language from both sides and while I understand that we’re extremely angry about the violence that Cathy Brennan has and continues to enact against trans women, I don’t think that shouting back and forth that the other person is an “asshole” or a “prick” is a good use of time, nor productive.

UPDATE (26 June):

The ‘most aggressive’ of the group (consensus of those who were there) has been identified as a transwoman, Allyson Clarke. A friend of Clarke’s, Lori Adorable, made a post claiming how Clarke is “incredibly conciliatory” regarding the disagreements between transwomen and radfems, so lets see:

Clarke: “I have previously taken a very olive-branch-y stance towards radscum.”

Ah, “radscum” will probably get you the Nobel Peace Prize. Or not. Clarke was described as the most aggressive of the group that surrounded Cathy Brennan and the other radfems. If this is the standard of conciliation that transwomen have, it is doubtful that any civil discussions will ever take place.

[Adding a massive trigger warning for those who are unfamiliar with the subject of this post. It contains a lot of references to transphobia and transmisogyny.]

Well, Cathy Brennan has done it again.

She has outed, doxed, and grossly misgendered another trans woman, and this time it’s a real-life friend of mine, Ally C. (I will not use her full name here, because I don’t want to add to any Google results that will now come up on her.) Ally tried to avoid this very possibility by erasing all traces of her full identity online, but Cathy still somehow found her. It was only when I called Ally to let her know that she decided she might as well take the password protection off her blog and share her side of the story. Please read it here: http://nutsandboltsoftrans.wordpress.com/2012/06/24/i-am-the-lady-who-cathy-brennan-sexually-harassed-at-dyke-march/

You may have noticed something about Ally’s blog: it’s incredibly conciliatory. She was using that blog to extend an olive branch to hateful, transphobic radfems, because she is an amazingly kind and generous human being. Cathy, on the other hand, is continuously threatening the lives of women she disagrees with. She is *literally* putting trans women’s lives in danger— not just their mental health, housing, relationships, and employment, but their fucking *lives.*

So while anyone can assault anyone— while it is *possible* that this amazingly kind person assaulted a violent bigot— that is not the story I believe. There are indeed some rare cases when we should NOT believe someone who claims to be a victim of assault, and those cases are almost entirely made up of privileged, bigoted ‘victims’ who want to smear the names of marginalized people they virulently hate. If you don’t look at Cathy’s doxing post on Ally (which I will not link to) and see the most stomach-turning kind of hatred, I don’t know what to tell you.

So unless Cathy can produce evidence of the assault, I will stand by Ally. Cathy claims there is a video. I asked her for a link. She linked me to her threatening, misgendering post on my friend instead. Basically, she linked me to proof that *she* is a dangerous person, not Ally.

What happened at Dyke March is that Cathy expected to be able to hold up a sign saying she supported the literal elimination of trans women without a single trans woman saying anything to her. She expected to be able to proclaim that Ally should not exist without Ally saying a damn thing, and when Ally *dared* to call her on her violent bigotry, she **sexually harassed her, bullied her, and then falsely claimed Ally assaulted her** . The only thing Cathy will accomplish through this campaign to smear, harass, and threaten this beautiful person— besides cementing her status as an actual human nightmare, reaffirming that she is a disgrace to feminists and cis women, and revealing that she is willing to make a mockery of actual assault for twisted political purposes— will be making Ally into the community hero she deserves to be. And maybe, possibly—hopefully— she will also finally be discredited and disbarred.

ETA: Because I want to highlight this major part from Ally’s post and make sure everyone gets to see it: CATHY BRENNAN SEXUALLY HARASSED ALLY. SHE ADMITTED TO IT.On top of falsely accusing her of assault and now doxing her, she fucking SEXUALLY HARASSED HER.

I am writing to say exactly what it says on the tin. I am claiming identity as the woman who Cathy Brennan sexually harassed at Dyke March. I am the woman who was misgendered by her crony. I am the woman who both Cathy Brennan and at least one other crony deliberately transgressed the personal space of multiple times, despite being politely asked to maintain a calm distance from me. I joined this confrontation because another trans woman needed backup, because of what we all knew would happen–she would immediately silence and personally attack us, and to attempt to provoke us into base displays of anger. I was the target of more ad-hominem attacks, blatant silencings, rude interruptions, and tone arguments than I can count.

And I am not going to let you give my friends shit because they had the guts to write about it and I didn’t. If you want to shout at somebody for the aggressive context that argument took, don’t you dare shout at somebody who tried to start a calm conversation and needed the backup. Don’t you dare shout at any of the people who tried to make calm contributions to the argument. Don’t you dare shout at the cis woman who was silenced very nearly to blows. Don’t you dare. They wanted nothing more than a peaceful conversation and a peaceful chance to ask her to stop endangering the lives of trans women. I am the trans woman who had the spoons to deal with that stuff, so I am the one who stepped in when things got way out of hand. And I will tolerate no ridiculous bullshit being thrown at me. WordPress has an IP ban function, and I am ready to use it. Commenters stay within my comment guidelines or they are gone. You claim to want to have a constructive conversation, prove it.

I have previously taken a very olive-branch-y stance towards radscum. I still believe in the inherent goodness in all of these people, and that everyone really just needs to try to expand their worldview to take a more gentle approach to each other. But what Cathy Brennan had in mind by carrying a Sheila Jeffreys sign at dyke march was not peaceful. She was attempting to instigate a conflict. Dyke March is supposed to be a safe space. A person who is actively contributing to the unsafeness of a safe space has no right to be there, and that is very different from just being a transphobe who wanted to have a good time without spreading their transphobia. I will not ever ask a transphobic person who is not spreading their transphobia to leave a safe space. The sign is what pushed it for me. I still think we can come to be allies. But not like that. I will protect my sisters, cis and trans, lesbian or not. Dykes are Dykes, according to a picture of me that is also all over the web these days.

Oh, but btw, Cathy Brennan–you made my girlfriend cry. So you’re not on the list of people I’m willing to give a second chance. You make all this hullabaloo about protecting CAFAB lesbians, then you bring one that is very close to my heart to tears, just in the name of keeping me from pissing in public restrooms. So this big-tent-feminist-community, we-can-all-find-the-good-in-each-other stuff I’m saying? You’re not welcome in that big tent.

Clarke added an update to the post:

(Update: This is going back up because Cathy Brennan and her stalk-brigade have figured out who I am. Good job. But, the fact that I was a member of a group that approached you, doesn’t mean you didn’t sexually harass me. You forcibly suggested that I sit on your lap. That’s sexual harassment. No ifs, ands, or buts. Deal with it.)

As was mentioned before, trying to diffuse the situation with some humour was taken as aggression, even though it was a large group of transwomen and genderqueers that approached Brennan and the group of lesbians and surrounded them. The aggressive group were looking for a fight, and there was to be no peaceful conversation with them. The aggressive group outnumbered the lesbians between two to one, to four to one. Clearly transwomen have little experience living ‘as women’ in the world, by calling that attempt at diffusion “sexual harassment”, particularly as the aggressive group vastly outnumbered the lesbians, the power difference was clearly with the transwomen/queers.

It is also ridiculous that in all these transwomen’s and queer’s posts they are claiming victimhood, when they were the aggressive group that cornered the group of lesbians.

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44 thoughts on “NYC Dyke March – inclusive, but not for lesbians”

Another commenter on “glompkitty” expresses amazement that Cathybrennan even showed up. Apparently actual lesbian females aren’t supposed to have the audacity to leave their house and go to an “inclusive” march that is meant for just transactivists and their supporters now. They aren’t supposed to have any events, not even ones they’ve created themselves. Women of all stripes take note – transactivists demand “inclusiveness” – their next step is to intimidate all other women out of the spaces they have painstakingly made for themselves, starting with the ones who campaigned to keep a safe space for women. The step after this will be to allow male “supporters” and allies to join the Dyke March (witness the Take Back the Night rallies and other feminist events that were formerly female only.) The final step is getting rid of te events and spaces altogether, either by cancelling them because of the “lack of interest” or making them part of a larger, mixed-“gender” event/group – and renaming the original term to mean primarily males.
Unless women stand up for themselves and do something about the trans wedge into the feminist movement, in 20-30 years, “dyke” will have been “reframed” to mean males. Watch.

Oh yes, these events are not for lesbians any more – check this, this is chub-rub (a female genderqueer) leading the march.

It’s almost 6am here in New York City. I just got back from a long night of partying post-Dyke March, my very first Dyke March ever. I was honored to lead the march with the banner, touched to see so many of our allies cheering us on, and just proud to be able to celebrate being who I am.

If these people don’t identify as women, as lesbians, what are they doing leading the march?

Good question.
Someone I know frequently moans to me about how transmen aren’t allowed at Michfest. I am honestly confused by this complaint (if it is true – I wouldn’t know, never been there myself.) If they no longer identify as women, why would they want to go to Michfest?

Well, exactly. I think this is one reason ‘we’ generally don’t bother including transmen any more, they regard themselves now as men, not women. Many of them on become transmen behave in the most sexist ways towards women anyway.

Those trans and genderqueer folks who harassed Cathy and her friends are a bunch of bullies. They go out of their way and expand a lot of energy to scream at and even follow around a group of people just because they do not like them but later on complain about how inconvenient and upsetting everything was. Classic bully tactic. Spot the victim and then later play at being the victim because the true victim had the audacity to fight back and not be a good little object of hate that is not quite human.

January Hunt et al obviously like to play at being the Trans Inquisition Committee and therefore are a complete liability for everyone that associates with them. The moment a community will tolerate bullies like this means the beginning of a slow degeneration of communal health. I’ve seen this happening in schools where bullying significantly impeded the overall social climate. Lesbians who cannot accept the behaviour shown against Cathy better take heed and focus their concerns elsewhere so that they can get out of the queer/trans alliance. Even without individuals like Hunt it seems to be an extremely privileged, white, college-bred community that has enough time to focus on inconsequentialities before its members can settle down in the suburbs.

These “trans women” and gender twits had no place, obviously, at something called Dyke March. They have ZERO respect for real lesbian women. Ban them completely or shut the damn thing down. They obviously care NOTHING for the rights of real dykes. To hell with them.

Just read the screenshots you took from Reinhart’s. Laughing so hard at the fact that they are claiming they needed so many people around to counter The Force That Is Cathy. Clearly an attempt at intimidation. The people who fell for that “Cathy is so evil we need your help” line deserve an award for their stupidity.

These people are typical abusive men escalating towards violence, any woman who disagrees using words apparently “deserves” their fists.

Hmmm… consider. They claim that approval for their ideology is increasing, yet their frantic desperation is escalating in spite of all this alleged “growing support”. Yet more support tends to make marginalized groups feel better, not worse — so what could possibly cause an uptake to their desperation? Obviously they don’t believe their own press release about themselves.

God I wish I had been there – I know that sounds crazy Cathy! – but I dare those shitbags to try to back a group of us into a corner like that…

Dudes (and female-sellouts): Don’t threaten us. Don’t. Just back the fuck off. NOW. This is not a battle you are going to win. Move the fuck on already. Everyone knows you’re whiny po-mo batshit attention seekers by now! Your work is done!

Just to alert everyone to an update in the post (in the middle of chub-rub’s version of events):

BREAKING NEWS – Just had the confirmation that the ‘shy little wallflower of a transwoman’ that chub-rub was compelled to speak up for, was none other than Ida Hammer, well known transactivist. That is Ida in the (currently) last picture with hand on chest talking to Brennan.

Credibility for chub-rub’s version of events just plummented below zero!

You can take everything else chub-rub said with a grain of salt.

Given that chub-rub’s BFF transwoman is Hammer, and chub-rub is queer not lesbian, it explains why chub-rub got to hold the banner at the start of the march. I would be interested to know if any ACTUAL lesbians were banner holders, or, transwomen and genderqueers (many of whom are het or bi).

I’m quite new to this. I’ve never actually even heard of Cathy Brennan before this point. However, I think that disallowing people on the more fluid points of the gender spectrum anywhere is not inclusive and not in the spirit if any LGBT affiliated community. Are straight people allowed at pride parades? Yes. They are allies.

trans, genderqueer people and others are also allies. a desire to show up and support the dyke march (with no ill intentions, meaning, they are not there to counter-protest) I think the problem stems in the bitterness trans people feel about being excluded. while they may not identify as female, they have long histories in being female and tie to the community that can’t be erased. I could understand that bitterness too.

this reminds me a lot of the divide between feminism and lgbt rights, which have so much in common and so much to gain from each other.

I think that there needs to be a white flag on both sides. I don’t think anyone likes to be excluded and I don’t think anyone likes to be yelled at/feel “assaulted”.

Non-dyke people holding banners like “resist the marriage paradigm” and “free blowjobs” *does* count as a counter-protest. Like as white person you go to black conventions (or whatever they’re called) and hold a sign “jobs in cotton fields for all!”. Clearly disruptive.

Also there’s an important difference between a) expressing the emotions and problems you got because of being X, and b) *wanting to belong to* X. For the latter type of persons a march is never arranged because that’s not what marches are for. Marches are for expressing lived experiences.

P.S. lbg rights directly, and merely, *follow* from feminism. Their don’t have to “gain a lot from each other” because the direction of process is *always* and *only* like this: feminism –> lbg rights. Acyclic. Read a history book and learn about other countries’ cultures.
There has never been a successful lbg movement *before* a successful feminism movement and the overall (lbg) equality (and happiness) of citizens of a country is *directly* positively correlated to the amount of women’s rights and welfare.
So many lesbians and esp. gays have totally no clue WHY they are actually oppressed… it’s almost cute.

Sheesh! Classed out of our own Marches meant to represent us! And there is a Trans March the night before in SF, and then they come and crash our SF Dyke March, which is barely getting by, the next night! Trans apologists only hurt the Lesbian/Dyke cause. Went to STarbucks yesterday with my DYKE partner, we’re two obvious Butches, was wearing some of my pride stuff, and saw another, all I could say ‘genderqueer’, a passing what would seem like Butch, but with those flattened by a binder breasts wearing a PRIDE hat. We were out loud and proud with the het baristas there at Starbucks, but in NO WAY did the genderqueer try to connect with us, and then I saw her hanging with some real straight looking dude, unless it was another further along in their transition. The slumpy looking clothes, baseball hat and trying hard to not be seen as female in any way..and then hanging with the dude, even though sporting a ‘Pride” hat in rainbow colors, and a pride rainbow colored bracelet..and yet in no way can they connect with two Butch Dykes, one of us also wearing rainbow gear. Gotta rely on straight allies for more support than my own ‘queer’ community members. Used be Dykes ALWAYS acknowledged other Dykes..but ah alas they dont’ identify as Lesbian/Female or Dyke…but rather as ‘genderqueer/male/FTM’! Fuck it saddens me!

I can see more and more of these types of showdowns taking place, and I’ve had my own in the past…as we exit our communities more and more because of such harassment! Communities WE as Dykes and born Females with Feminist sensibilities created!
-In Sisterhood,
-FeistyAmazon